Hand quilting a spray basted quilt with perle cotton...advice please?
 

I've spent most of today crawling around on the floor wrestling quilt layers and inhaling spray baste fumes. Thought I'd done a pretty fair job till I tried to iron it, as shown in the online class I'm taking. Wrinkle, wrinkle, wrinkle! So I laid it out on the floor again & smoothed & smoothed and it may be okay now but I wouldn't put money on it. I hate basting! I used flannel for the batting. Do you think that could be the reason for all the wrinkling? Anyhow, I've admired all the big stitch outline or ditch quilting I've seen on the blogs using perle cotton and want to try that. Actually, what I plan to use is #10 crochet cotton because that is what I have & I don't want to go shopping. Is there anything else I need to do to stabilize the quilt before I get started? Any tips from hand quilters out there? Was spray basting a mistake? I'd love to hear any thoughts and advice. Thanks so much!

I've never spray basted a quilt. I either pin or thread baste. Last year I used a variegated heavier hand quilting thread. It was beautiful thread and the colors were lovely but was a BEAR to quilt. It was a cotton top; W&N batting and flannel backing. I normally don't have issues hand quilting with W&N although I know many do. My only guess it was the thread that made it so painful - an I mean physically painful. It's been decades since I've used #10 crochet cotton but I think that's heavier than the thread I used on this quilt. All I can advise is to take your time, use a large needle; really good thimble and you might want to invest (or find) in a pair of needle nosed pliers!

I hand quilt, but I have never spray-basted (bit worried I'd do myself in with the fumes and the idea of overspray/residue puts me off). Last time I used perle If I remember correctly I used a chenille needle. Needle nosed pliers may be handy. Will watch this with interest as I would like to know if the spray baste affects the needle (would it leave a sticky residue?).

I have seen posts from hand quilters who spray baste. It doesn't seem to be a problem for them, but it may depend somewhat on the brand of spray.

I too am thinking that a heavy thread like this is going to require a needle with a pretty big eye, which in turn is going to be very difficult to push through the layers. Definitely test out thread and needle on a practice piece first. You may want to go to something smaller, even for big stitch.

I tried to do a sample with some #10 thread to see how it would look. Looked OK, but was really hard to stitch. I used a large eyed needle, but the thread pulled at the layers and did not want to go thru them smoothly. Changed my mind and went with regular thread.

Thanks for your replies. I did a little test quilting after I posted this and have decided against it. The main reason is the fabrics are so busy that the quilting didn't really add anything. I was using white thread and it looked good on the white blocks, but not so good on the busy print blocks. The quilting itself wasn't so difficult, but I just didn't feel like the quilt was worthy of this much hand work.

Maybe the ironing caused the wrinkles?? I haven't used the basting spray, but I think that this is the first one on the subject of spray basting that mentioned ironing.

You could try tieing the quilt with the perle cotton! I did one queen size that way and just love it! My idea was to let the fabrics and pattern speak, not the quilting. I was going to remove the ties later, but I love it that way. Mine were about 4" apart. You can pick certain points on the pattern or just do an all over grid. I used a large needle and sometimes pliers.

For future reference (since you've decided otherwise this time):
I do big stitch quilting with #10 crochet thread, BUT I use all cotton quilting weight fabrics for front and back and I use wool batting for ease of stitcching.
I hand baste for several reasons -- I don't have a well ventilated space large enough to use the spray baste; the 'sandwich' stays together better (for me) over the long period it takes me to handquilt, move, the quilt, re-hoop, fold it out of sight, drag to guild and bees for working on; I prefer the feel of the finished, washed quilt's weight and softness with wool batting. I use a cotton batt for quilts that I machine quilt.

Jan in VA